Dell accused of flaw coverup

December 3, 2009 | 15:17

Tags: #dell-xps #e6400 #xps

Companies: #dell

Reports are circulating the web about performance and heat issues with a selection of Dell laptops - and the company appears to be doing its best to prevent anyone from finding out about the problem.

As reported over on DailyTech, users are complaining in droves about a bug in the BIOS of Dell E6400 and E6500 laptops which sees a thermal throttle kick in and drop the processor speed by a whopping 95 percent as soon as the processor gets even a little warm.

While the company is almost certainly working on an updated BIOS that will fix the issue, it clearly doesn't want to harm laptop sales in the lucrative run up to Christmas. As a result, posts from the official Dell Support forum documenting the issue have started to go missing. Users who insist on re-creating threads in order to further chase the problem find themselves banned from the site completely - and all their posts filed in the bit bucket.

One such user, who goes under the name "Tinkerdude," has become so enraged with both the issue and Dell's Big Brother-esque denials that he has released an analysis of the issue - titled "Performance loss during normal operating in a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop due to processor and bus clock throttling" - which almost hits sixty pages, was temporarily available in PDF form on a separate site but which also seems to have disappeared.

Although the performance throttling issue surrounding the E6400 and E6500 ranges is the most talked about issue currently facing the company, Dell is also facing more flak after it transpired that it had shipped inadequate power supplies with its top-end XPS 1645 laptops. The 90W supplies - which were provided instead of the 130W PSUs required - were inadequate to both power and charge the laptop at the same time, and although the company is replacing PSUs for those who complain many are clamoring for a widely publicised recall campaign.

Responding to the concerns about censorship on the Dell customer forums, representative Bill B from Dell's Social Media and Community department stated that the company is "aware of concerns raised" in the DailyTech article, and claimed that "teams are looking into the details." Beyond that, the company has not offered an explanation - nor an indication of when the issues with the laptops will be fixed.

Are you shocked to see Dell censoring comments in the manner, or is it their right to police their forums as they see fit? Are you affected by either of the issues currently doing the rounds in the Dell forums? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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